“Most of the deportees are Kanak, like me! They booted us out of our own land!” On the phone 'Zacharie' - not his real name - grows angry as he tells his tale. It is one similar to the fate suffered by other prisoners, most of whom are, like him, from the indigenous community of New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. On June 22nd 2024, this 27-year-old, imprisoned since 2022 in Camp Est, the overcrowded and unfit jail in the New Caledonian capital Nouméa, was summoned along with 22 other inmates by the person in charge of custody. It was the middle of the afternoon, and he suspected nothing.
“We were taken into his office one by one,” Zacahrie recalls. “He told me: ‘You’re going to France, whether you like it or not! If you refuse to get onboard the plane, we’ll force you.’ He handed me a piece of paper without giving me time to read it and said: ‘Sign this!’ There was no choice!”
Zacharie was given just a few minutes to pack his personal items into a box before being taken to a small cell, where he was left waiting for several hours with other prisoners. “At around 10 o’clock at night, they took us out and put us on a bus,” he says. The bus headed to Nouméa-Magenta airport, where a military plane flew them to La Tontouta international airport. There, they boarded a commercial passenger flight to mainland France.
Accompanied just by their guards, the prisoners remained handcuffed for the whole flight, even when served a meal, and were not allowed to stand or speak. After a seemingly-endless journey they finally landed at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport near Paris, from where they were bussed to Réau prison around 30 miles south-east of the capital. The next day, Zacharie was moved to a jail in eastern France, the final stop in his long journey.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
That same June 22nd, seven figures from the pro-independence Coordination Group for Field Actions (CCAT), accused of being the ringleaders behind the violent unrest that began in New Caledonia on May 13th 2024, were also flown to mainland France - on a separate, specially-chartered flight – to be detained there. That case attracted all the headlines, but it was not the only 'deportation' of its kind.
For at the same time the French authorities were discreetly organising other prisoner transfers, involving inmates such as Zacharie imprisoned for standard criminal offences. These men had already been in Camp Est before the uprisings began. Faced with silence about this process from the prison service, the collective group Solidarité Kanaky took on the painstaking task of tracking down and counting the transferred inmates. It found that there were 69 such “deportees” after May 2024, most of them moved during that summer.
Coercion and fear
All of them are men, and almost all are Kanak; this is no surprise, since Kanak people make up just over 40% of New Caledonia’s population but more than 90% of its inmates. Most are young, aged between 20 and 30, and some are fathers. According to accounts collected by Mediapart and the prisoners' rights group Observatoire international des prisons (OIP), most of the men agreed to be moved only at the last moment, and under duress.
'Kevin' – not his real name - was on the same flight as Zacharie. This 28-year-old, locked up since November 2023, tells a similar tale: “They told me if I didn’t sign, I’d be sent anyway, but without my stuff.” Some, who had never flown before, feared for their lives. One told his family it felt like “a real horror film”, and even thought they might be thrown into the sea mid-flight.
In a report published on May 12th, Solidarité Kanaky said that none of the transferred men had been allowed to prewarn loved ones before the sudden departure. Kevin and Zacharie both say that, on the day they were moved, Camp Est’s phone booths had been shut down and their requests to call family were ignored. Only once they had reached their new prison - 10,500 miles from home - could they make contact.
'Béatrice' – not her real name - did not learn of the transfer of her son 'Sylvain' on June 22nd until after he had arrived in mainland France. “No one warned us. There were rumours, yes, but it wasn’t until the Monday [editor's note, June 24th] that the authorities gave me an answer,” she says angrily.
Several prisoners suffered mental health problems linked to these deportations.
Many found it difficult to adapt to their new circumstances. To use a word that keeps cropping among the detainees, it came as a “shock”. Kevin was the only Kanak in his new prison. He knew no one and had no support. He speaks of the cold and the loneliness. “Conditions were very tough at Camp Est, but at least I could see my loved ones,” he sighs.
“Several inmates suffered psychological problems linked to these deportations, on top of the trauma of violence suffered at Camp Est,” says Solidarité Kanaky. “The isolation in France has serious effects. Most inmates get no visits from loved ones because of the distance, and struggle to contact them [editor's note, because of the high cost of phoning New Caledonia].”
In one court judgement, which concerns a detainee sent to a prison in the south of France, and which Mediapart has seen, it was revealed that one prisoner’s entire earnings behind bars went on phone calls.
Sylvain’s case also raised other issues. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he had received psychiatric care at Camp Est. But in his new prison in central France, this 30-year-old father was left without care for over two months. “When I saw him again in September, he was in crisis,” says his mother. “He didn’t recognise me. He was thin, lost, screaming. He needed care. I had to fight to get him into hospital.”
Feeling abandoned
Like other families of transferred inmates, Béatrice gave up everything to be near her son Sylvain. To pay for her flight to France and cover future costs, she sold her car and some personal effects. Since the unrest she had lost her job as a care assistant. She now works part-time at a care home near her son's French prison, but her monthly wage of 820 euros barely covers her outgoings.
“I’ve had no help,” she says. “I’m angry. I carry the burden for all these young men and the mothers back home who have no news. Everyone talks about the political prisoners [editor's note, the members of the CCAT], but who talks about our children? The politicians have abandoned us!”
Sylvain, Kevin and Zacharie did not ask to go to mainland France. Kevin had even applied for parole in May 2024. He still doesn’t know why he was “deported”: he had just five months left on his sentence. Zacharie was in a similar situation. “Everything was ready for a sentence adjustment,” he says. “The parole judge had approved it, she’d even given me my hours for partial release. A week later, I was sent here, and I never heard another word about it!”
Some say the transfers, which were made at the discretion of the prison service, were designed to clear space in the already crammed Camp Est. Especially since, according to Nouméa’s public prosecutor Yves Dupas, the crackdown on the Kanak uprising of May 2024 led to 243 new imprisonments. Others believe the moves were a way to punish “troublemakers”.
I’m scared I’ll end up homeless, I’ve got no family here, I don’t know France.
That is the explanation offered by the prison authorities, according to Louise Chauchat, a barrister in Nouméa who represents some of the inmates who were transferred to France against their will - under a so-called order and security measure - after riots broke out in Camp Est on May 13th 2024, the day the unrest on the archipelago exploded. “It seems to me that’s how they decided who to move,” she says. For his part, Kevin insists he only “shouted” and “made noise” during those rebellious days to show his anger.
Serving a short sentence, Kevin spent just four and a half months in his mainland prison before being released. When leaving, he received no help from the prison service. “If my partner hadn’t joined me, I’d be on the streets,” he says.
The pair now live with her brother in eastern France. Kevin gets no housing benefit and cannot work, as his New Caledonian social security number is not valid in mainland France. Four months ago he found work, but it is undeclared. He longs to “go back home” to his family, but doesn’t know if he’s allowed. “Before I got out, my probation officer said I was banned from returning to Caledonia for two years,” he says, baffled.
He cannot afford the journey anyway. A one-way flight to Nouméa costs at least 800 euros, which is money he doesn’t have. The OIP and Solidarité Kanaky say the prison service refuses to pay for return fares. Yet the OIP points out that the penal code says prisons “can carry out or contribute to the purchase of a travel ticket”, though they are not required to.
That is what the authorities told Béatrice: that in a few weeks her son will finish his sentence and be free but his flight home will be at his own cost. “The state sent him here, it’s up to the state to send him back!” she says angrily. She is now thinking of launching a fundraising appeal to help Sylvain get home.
Zacharie, too, longs to be free of this enforced exile. Freed early thanks to a rare sentence reduction, he was also told he cannot leave mainland France for two years. “I’m struggling,” he says. “I’ve just joined an emergency shelter. I’m scared I’ll end up homeless, I’ve got no family here, I don’t know France. What am I supposed to do here for two years? Beg, live off benefits, bounce between shelters?”
Contacted by phone, both the prison department of the Ministry of Justice and the management at Camp Est prison declined to respond to Mediapart's questions.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter